


Best Intentions

by Acidqueen (syredronning)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: ASCEM, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-23
Updated: 2010-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-12 03:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syredronning/pseuds/Acidqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of the episode "The Empath", Kirk and Spock worry about McCoy and coax him into sessions with a psychologist. She insists on doing a hypnosis session when she feels that McCoy is repressing some vital knowledge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Intentions

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to JB, because my muses were definitely channeling her :) Also dedicated to Janet, because it has hypnosis in it.
> 
> Many thanks to Qzeebrella for the beta. All remaining errors and wacky psychology are mine.
> 
> Originally posted December 2005.

Ellen Parker, Ph.D. in psychology from Moscow University and an additional degree in interspecies contacts from the Plutonian College, stood at her small window on Space Station Delta 3 and looked outside into one of the small halls the architect had built to create an Earth-like feeling of a courtyard. Not that he had really succeeded with the materials he had been allowed to use, but what the heck - she liked the view well enough to often gaze outside and watch people crossing the window. Today, though, she solely concentrated on the slim, blue-eyed man that stood outside, taking his time until the last minute before entering her office.

He hadn't come to consult her by his own choice in the first place, and it showed every time. However, he couldn't resist an official order by his commanding officer and the professional opinion of his medical colleagues. And so he had entered her office two weeks ago, distanced and closed in his behavior, just like his captain had predicted. He had worn the same light, sand- colored trousers and the fitting, long-sleeved shirt as today, the colors in contrast with his startling eyes. However, his gaze had been guarded, and his reticence had never left him, still hiding most of the problems for which he had been sent to her in the first place.

She understood a lot, but not everything. She had been informed about the disastrous mission with the Vians by the official reports and by some personal words with his worried friends via the long distance call. One had been severely threatened, the other even tortured too. But it had been her patient who had taken the worst by almost dying in their arms. And a part of him seemed to have died there, too.

Well, sometimes even the best of us need some counseling, she thought and watched him cross the hall with bouncing steps. But he sure didn't like it, and was fighting her all the way. This was unusual when compared to his records and his background that included a minor degree in psychology. Everyone around him had expected him to get back on track fast like he did every other time, but he didn't; instead he had trouble sleeping, was eating little and lost in thoughts, easily irritated and extremely moody.

"Hello, Doctor McCoy," Parker greeted him light-heartedly.

"A wonderful day to you, Doctor Parker," McCoy replied charmingly, taking her hand for a second. It was more than he'd done the first day, but less than she'd hoped for, Parker thought as she waited for him to get seated in the comfy chair. So far, most of his barriers were still in place. It was time for another means to dig deeper.

She sat down behind her desk, folding her hands on the tabletop. "We've met three times now, and I've got the 'Fleet and a pushy captain on my back..." She paused for a second, and McCoy groaned but didn't say a thing. "Your friends want you back," she pursued, "and I thought we could try something else today to find out why you're acting the way you are."

He groaned again and rolled his eyes. "Didn't you dig deep enough already? I'm doing much better than last week, I'm sleeping well, without any nightmares, and I got off the little red pills. I don't know what you're hunting for."

Parker shook her head. "Come on, Doctor, you know yourself well enough to realize that something's wrong."

He laced his fingers in front of his chest, staring down on them. Then he shrugged. "We've all changed a lot over the last months. Our missions take their tolls on everyone and yet, it's only me sitting here."

"You want to tell me that captain Kirk isn't fit for command anymore?" she asked.

"No, just that we're all a bit...suffering from burn-out," he mumbled without meeting her gaze. He sighed deeply. "Alright," he said, and looked up. "What do you mean by 'other means'?"

"Hypnosis," she stated.

"Hypnosis?" His right brow rose, crinkling his temple. His eyes seemed suddenly layered with ice, crystalline and brittle. "That's never been one of my favorites, and even less so after all those aliens who have meddled with my mind over the last years."

"I know," she said, "I've read the reports. But we both know that sometimes it's the best method to reach blocked areas...don't you agree?" As he remained silent, she added, "Just what is it you don't want to face, Doctor?"

"Nothing that I know of," he stated. "But if you insist on it, let's get on with it."

"You don't have to agree," she said, frowning now too.

"I want get back to the Enterprise, and I want to get back ASAP." Folding his arms across his chest, he showed anything but a pose of someone open for hypnosis. "Come on, I'm ready."

Unconvinced, but wrapping herself in her professional attitude like a second skin she made the preparations, then switched on the tape with the music and began speaking the usual words of introduction.

 

He went under quicker than expected. And she found a rather unexpected result, too.

They had a break and a coffee before going back to the tape.

"Are you ready to listen?" she asked, and McCoy nodded.

She switched it on.

"I told Spock he had good bed-side manner... and then I thought that if I had to die to make him sit next to me like this and hold my hand, I'd happily do so."

"Why?"

"Because I love him."

"You love him?"

"Yes, for a while now."

She bent forward and switched off the tape.

"I didn't want to ask further in the hypnosis," Parker said. "But you've got to know the truth."

McCoy stared at the wall behind her.

"You didn't realize that, did you?" she asked softly.

He focused on her and swallowed hard. "No, not really... not at all, honestly. I mean, yes, he's become a friend over the last three years, and we've had quite a mission together, keeping Jim in one piece... but I've never..." His words died as he shook his head slowly, as if still in trance.

"Well," Parker said with compassion, "I am aware that this is more knowledge than you wanted to achieve in this session, but I think it was necessary."

He frowned and sat up, bringing his legs off the chair. "I've got to think about that for a while," he said. "I mean... why would I say something like that... " He stopped again, lost in thoughts.

"I don't think you should leave now, Doctor McCoy," she insisted. "Please, stay and let us talk about it for a while."

She could see him battling the feelings within him for a moment; then he leaned back again, his shoulders sagging.

"Alright," he said, wearily.

"Let's talk about him," she said. "Just talk, okay? I know so little of him. When did you meet first?"

"When I came onboard of the Enterprise...I've known Jim Kirk for years, and he'd offered me the position of CMO. But he hadn't told me much about his first officer, so it was quite a surprise for me to see a Vulcan there." His voice became steadier with every word, and Parker was relieved to see him relaxed over his storytelling.

"He's the only one who serves with a mixed crew, and he's the only half-Vulcan who's reached adulthood, quite a unique man, in many respects. In the beginning, I took him at face value, but then I found out that beneath his controlled surface, there's quite a lot of emotion around. I began nagging him, trying to make him leave his shell from time to time...not always succeeding with that..." He stopped, pondering his own words with his eyes resting somewhere above Parker.

"But in the very moment he thought you're dying, you felt...emotion from him, didn't you?" she asked. "Did that make the difference?"

McCoy shrugged lightly. "I've seen him smile, once, and though it touched me, it didn't make such an impression. I guess...I think it was seeing him reacting like that over me...over my person, which made all the difference."

He took a deep breath. "I knew I cared for him...learned it the hard way, in all those moments I thought he'd die. But he and Jim always were the ones in my care, never the other way round. It was unreal and...weird...positions inverted."

"And as he cared for you, you realized you liked it?"

McCoy tilted his head to the side and unlaced his fingers.

"Obviously," he said reluctantly.

Parker couldn't help smiling. "Very obviously, Doctor. Well, the time's over for today," she said, gazing at her watch. She always kept a strict time table, finding it better for patients and her likewise to keep every meeting short and purposeful instead of dragging it on until it developed into meaningless chit-chat. "Same time tomorrow?"

He nodded, still visibly off-balance but for once facing the truth he had avoided for so long. He'd get used to it, Parker thought, not today, but soon. Her job was almost over, now that his subconscious had released its most burning secret; the only thing left to her was some gentle stabilization. Not every man had to face the fact they could be bisexual so late in life, but she trusted McCoy to be grounded enough to accept this. In fact, she was almost tingling in the face of this unexpected revelation, as if she witnessed the birth of a new person.

"Yeah, tomorrow," he repeated and got up. "You've uncorked quite a bottle, Ellen," he said with a weak smile that did little to hide his momentary worry, and shook her hand.

"I know, Doctor," she replied, grasping his firmly. "Are you sorry about it?"

He shrugged. "Would it help?" Then his expression turned thoughtful. "No, I'm not really sorry about learning something...although it is damn unexpectedly." Shaking himself out of his reverie he dropped his hand.

"Tomorrow," he said once again and left.

 

As promised, he returned the next day, and told her more about the fascinating Vulcan. She tried to stay in the background as much as possible, only nudging his memories along once he got stuck in thoughts. In a way, he was much too sensitive for his own good and needed his caustic layer to get along in a world of too many losses and too much hurt. On the other hand, once he faced danger and pain, he was quick at making decisions, his foremost motivation being to spare others the same pain. There was an edge of self-sacrifice in his personality, but that was probably the case for everyone with a medical profession.

"So you decided to stay on Yonada? Although your friends tried to talk you out of it?" she asked curiously. She could understand Natira, who wanted to keep the only man available. And he was anything but a bad choice. But that McCoy would take such a step...

"Yes," he said.

"They cared too much for you...?"

"Yes. Jim was like a mother hen around me. And Spock..." He licked his lips in thoughts. "When we were stunned, I was the last one to wake up. And when he helped me up, he left his hand on my shoulder for ever. It was weird."

"Weird?"

"Weird," McCoy repeated and met her gaze. "Because it was outside of our pattern of behavior. We never grew tired of nagging each other. Rattles and beads, he calls my equipment. I criticize his ears and his sometimes so damn cold-blooded actions. Although we have cared for each other for a while, we don't really show it."

"But this time he showed it. Even before you did. Not very Vulcan, is it?"

He frowned. "Doctor, could you please stop asking suggestive questions?"

Parker just smiled.

"Alright. Yes, it wasn't very Vulcan. But I already knew too much about what was going on under his façade. So that's not the main point."

McCoy fell silent, and Parker waited.

"I felt like being in moral debt. A blot on my Human score. He could admit more than I could. Damn elf." He snorted.

"Vulcans feel rather hot to a Human, did you know? Higher body temperature. It's like a heating cushion. Very nice...if it hadn't been him."

She couldn't help smiling again, at how stubborn men could be. But there was something left to ask.

"What will you do when you get back to the ship?"

He sighed. "I don't know. I thought about it half the night, but I really don't know. It's not easy. We're working rather closely together."

Parker nodded in sympathy. Relationships between colleagues were common but often a bit problematic, even with Starfleet's rather relaxed rules.

"The time's up for today," he suddenly said and got up. Flight syndrome, she diagnosed, but since he'd enough to chew on for a day, she let him escape good-naturedly with a promise for another meeting.

 

They met twice more at which time she felt that it was time to stop and write the final, classified report to the eyes of Starfleet Medical only. However, she scheduled a last meeting to say good-bye to him.

When McCoy entered the room that day, his baggage already with him, she was sitting at her console and studying an official photograph of the Vulcan. The man had been rather silent when she had seen him on screen, the captain doing all the talking. Dark, piercing eyes, shimmering hair. Keeping himself straight like a stick, with an almost impenetrable wall around him. It was hard to see behind it, imagining some of the emotional moments McCoy had spoken of.

"I can see why you don't want to talk to him," Parker said. McCoy walked around her, looking over her shoulder.

She indicated the screen, "He doesn't seem to be very approachable."

"He isn't," McCoy agreed dryly. "Guess I need to die again to find the courage for it."

"That might be too late."

"That might be exactly the right moment. Couldn't spoil all we have." He left the spot at her side and sat down on the chair's edge, folding one leg over the other.

"Is that how you want to handle it?" Parker asked. "Maybe it's time to put all your eggs in one basket."

McCoy smiled sadly. "He wouldn't know what to do with that saying. 'Eggs in a basket? There are no eggs onboard the Enterprise'," he imitated Spock.

Parker turned away from the screen and focused at him. "What do you really want to do?"

He closed his eyes. "I want to tell him, face to face, and I want him to not run away. I want him to touch me again. I had dreams...about him." He blushed and opened his eyes. "It's Pandora's box. Too damn dangerous. But I guess I'll try anyway."

She smiled. "That's all I wanted to hear."

"So I'm healed now?" he asked in mocking seriousness.

"You are. Go and join your friends again."

She walked around her table to shake hands with him. He met her halfway.

"Almost a pity that we've met for professional reasons," he said and closed both hands around hers. "But now that we're going apart - it's Len."

"Ellen," she said and tightly clutched his hands. "And it is a pity. You're one of the most charming men I've ever met. Use it to your advantage."

He laughed and bounced. She hadn't seen him that relaxed in all the time. "I'll do that, Ellen. I promise." And then he lowered his head and pressed a little kiss on her cheek. She hadn't felt that much like a teenager for decades.

"Take care," he said, when he pulled back. Taking his baggage, he winked and turned, leaving her office oddly empty. She hurried to the window, eyeing his leaving back until he was lost in the crowd.

"Good luck, Len," she said and sighed, hoping that the Vulcan was intelligent enough to accept this gift of love, even though he didn't seem.

 

She hadn't expected to see him here again, on the small viewer's platform on the outer area of Moon City, and so it took her a moment to be sure it was McCoy. In an impulse, she put her hand on his shoulder.

"Hello, Len!" she said with a big smile. "I haven't heard from you in months! What are you doing here?"

Her smile diminished as he turned around and met her gaze. He was slimmer than in the past, and the shadows under his eyes were bigger. He definitively looked worse.

"Hello, Ellen," he nevertheless replied in his charming way, "I'm on vacation at the moment, that's what I am doing here... relaxing... thinking --" He stopped in mid-sentence.

She was at loss for words for a second. "I see," she finally replied flatly, unsure what to say. Their former, easy way with each other seemed suddenly wrong to her. Something substantial had changed here... something radical had changed in him.

He gave her a crooked smile. "Wanna join me for a coffee and a talk, dear?"

"Yes," she said. Together they stepped down the platform and walked to a small restaurant, the silence between them even more tangible. When she finally sat across him, she was glad to close her hands around the menu and focus on the small dark letters, examining them far too long for her following order of a simple coffee.

He did the same, and only when the beverages arrived, their eyes met again. She took a deep breath, knowing that she needed to ask in the end, unable to bear not to know.

"It didn't work out?" she blurred out. She blushed and looked away, taking a sip of her coffee before she met his gaze again. "It didn't work out," she repeated in her normal voice. It wasn't a question anymore.

He fixed his gaze at his coffee, slowly stirring the dark liquid to solve the huge amount of sugar he had put into it. The sound of the spoon scratching over the bottom of the synthetic porcelain cup made her shiver.

"No," he finally said and looked up. "It didn't work out."

Thoughts juggled in her mind, tumbling in and out. She had many questions, but she didn't know how to ask them. "Did you try to talk to him?" she said in a low voice.

"I thought about it," he replied, and took the spoon out of the coffee, licked it dry and placed it neatly on the saucer. "But then we went on another away team." He fell in silence again.

She took another sip in the hope it would clear her throat for her next question. "Would you like to talk about it?"

This time his smile really reached his eyes, though it mainly lit up the sadness in them. "I miss your chair," he said and sank back into the hard chair of the restaurant. "Though it wasn't really good for one's back."

"If it's too comfortable, my patients would never leave me," she said and forced a small smile on her face.

His fingers danced on the edge of the table as if playing piano, and the very small, nervous sounds made it into her ear. She focused on the fingers, idly wondering when he had taken up this tick.

"I really did it," he said.

She startled. "What?"

"I began to take piano lessons. Someone told me I had the right fingers for it." He flexed his palm up, looking at his fingers. "Doesn't really work, though. I stopped after leaving the Service."

"You have left the Service?" Her voice was barely a whisper. Too many things had gone wrong here, obviously. He had loved the Enterprise and the people onboard. Leaving her meant he had given up his family.

He leaned forward and put both his arms on the table, right and left of the cup. "I had better tell you the whole story, Ellen. I had thought about telling him, honestly. But I kept delaying the day, always thinking that I would try it the next day. Then, shortly before the Enterprise was about to fly back home, we went on an away team on a planet called Sarpeidon. By mistake we landed in its ice age and met a girl there that had been banished into that terrible landscape by a despot. She couldn't get away from there and we, so she told us, couldn't either."

His fingers closed to fists, and she realized that this situation had been much more distressing than what he relayed to her now.

"What happened then?" she asked, her voice carefully leveled to professional concern.

"He fell for her, in the blink of an eye," he replied. "If it hadn't been for my persistence, we would've been stuck there. As it was, we came back, leaving her behind."

He looked at his hands and, realizing the tension that showed there, he opened them, pressing the spread palms on the table. "He fell for her," he repeated. "Being in the ice age deteriorated his Vulcan education. He probably needs the collective mind of his people. Well, whatever the reason, the moment his controls failed, he was just another guy going for a woman. It wasn't as if I hadn't seen him under the influence of the spores, but this was something different. In that cage on that ice world, he wasn't under foreign influence - instead, he was fully himself. All that lay behind his Vulcan mask open and visible to the outer world. And he was a heterosexual, jealous, possessive man, one that was close to killing me for the woman he wanted."

His fingers tapped on the table again, the nervy movement in sharp contrast to his clinical style of tale-telling.

She frowned, at his words and the sounds.

The edge of his mouth lifted slightly on her expression. "After this episode, I knew I would never tell him. What good would it have done."

She looked down on her cup of coffee, avoiding his gaze. It wasn't all of his story, she felt, but she didn't want to ask. Her professional stance was just a masquerade, here with him. But he went ahead nevertheless.

"The Enterprise returned to Earth, and he left the service to return to Vulcan. He left us as if he had never been our friend in the first place, overnight, without even a small good-bye. Jim was just as devastated about it as I was, but he jumped into his promotion to admiral like crazy. I couldn't talk him out of that weird idea. But I couldn't stay in the fleet either, without those two. We've become entangled in a strange way, and it was probably the best Spock could do to just leave and cut the Gordian knot."

She met his gaze over the table. "You don't believe that, do you?"

"I'm telling myself every morning that this is the right method, dear. Because I need to start all over again now, and it's a lot easier to do that when you just leave your former life behind and move on. No strings, no connections." He looked sharper at her now and briefly crossed his arms in front of his chest. She opened her mouth and closed it again when he waved for the waiter who arrived immediately. He paid and they left the restaurant, stepping out into the empty street.

"My flight leaves in half an hour," he said, and began to move towards the central station. She hurried to keep his pace, but in the end she breathlessly put her hand on his shoulder.

"Damn, Len, stop running away from me," she said, fighting for air. He stopped and turned his head to look at her.

"I'm only hurrying to catch my ship. Why are you running after me?"

She clamped her hand in his jacket and wanted to tell him that she was simply following him, but he was right.

"I'm so sorry, Len," she pressed out of her hurting lungs. Some tears sampled behind her lids, ready to betray her feelings. "I only had the best intentions."

"You know that there's an old saying 'The opposite of good are best intentions'?" he replied flatly. "You'd better left my subconscious where it belonged, Ellen. But I hope you learn something from it at least." He shook his arm free and walked through the counter gates away into the shuttle area, where she couldn't follow him without a ticket.

"So you're teaching me a lesson now, Doctor?" she shouted after him over the distance. He turned, a faraway figure already, and waved his arm in a somehow not unfriendly good-bye.

"Please, keep me posted," she yelled, desperate. "Please."

People's head started to turn around, watching her with reactions from frowns to compassion, but she heartily ignored them. All that counted for her now was the man that still looked in her direction. His face was only a blur over the distance, making her unable to read his features, but she could feel the change in his mood that had taken place. Without thinking she pressed her fingers on her lips and puffed him a kiss. He returned the gesture, deliberately exaggerating, then turned and left.

\-----------------  
Epilogue:

It had been a long day, and the only thing Ellen Parker had in mind when she came home was to fall in her bed and sleep, but then the news about V'Ger came in. She sat down on her console and scrolled through the news, looking at the pictures. Some seemed to have been taken by the bridge camera, and on one McCoy stood right behind the Vulcan and the Admiral with an unreadable face. Too distanced, she thought with a frown, and scrolled down for the other pictures. V'Ger, the Enterprise...and finally, the debriefing. Here, McCoy looked more like his former self, slightly smirking as if making a joke at the cost of the unknown viewer. His friends stood at his side, quite close once more, but the atmosphere on this picture was nevertheless different from the one above. She began to examine it closely, trying to put a finger on the differences, but she couldn't find any -- besides the look in his face. He had felt good when it had been taken, whatever the cause.

Giving up her analysis, she went into the bathroom for a shower, suddenly too awake to just fall into her bed. When she stepped out, she sat before the monitor once more, scrubbing her wet hair with a towel. Suddenly she saw it, and in disbelief she toggled between the two photos, checking her suspicion. "You lucky, lucky bastard," she muttered, torn between silly happiness for him and a small sorrow for herself, as she saw the changed department emblems on their coats; orange on McCoy, green on Spock on the first photo, orange on Spock and green on McCoy on the other photo. And was it just her imagination that the jackets didn't quite fit?

She leaned back in her chair. "Len, you lucky SOB," she repeated over and over through her fit of laughter, until a coughing attack made her stop. She took a sip of water from the bottle next to the monitor and dried her wet eyes. "Now I know why you're smirking like this, not only at me, but at the whole world," she said towards the monitor. "Maybe I'll get an invitation for your coming out party...if Vulcans party at all."

Switching off the screen, she went to bed, knowing it would feel cold and empty to her body -- but warm and cozy to her heart.


End file.
